I find your lack of steering ability disturbing!

Having taken receipt of my Millennium Falcon [and exhausted the pleasure I could get from flying it around the living room and attacking the dog!] we had our latest game of X Wing earlier this week at the club.

Chris had the honour of piloting the Falcon accompanied by an X Wing and I took Darth Vader, accompanied by 2 of his minions in TIE fighters... I'm not really sure where they get the names from... I mean, 'Backstabber and Mauler Mithel'... really??

Anyway, the points were worked out and all was equal.  Despite its size the Falcon is pretty nimble and more importantly has a 360 degree arc of fire, which was to prove pretty useful.  The encounter took place in an asteroid field where doubtless, Han Solo was engaged in some nefarious smuggling and was being brought to account by the forces of law and order.

The game opened with the 2 TIE fighters moving off round the edge of the board, trying to get in behind the X Wing and the Falcon [Backstabber has a bonus when he attacks from the side or rear] which seemed like a good idea at the time although it took them out of the fight for a couple of turns.

The Falcon after an initially cautious advance then steamed straight ahead, as did Darth Vader and in a flurry of missile fire they launched their additional missiles at each other, causing no damage whatsoever!!  The ships then passed by each other and then I had to try and reposition Vader's ship in order to fire, while the Chris' ship could merrily blaze away without worrying about arc of fire.

 

 

Meanwhile TIE fighter #1 had managed to get into position and fired at the X Wing before promptly crashing into an asteroid and then being blown apart by fire from the Rebel Scum!

The remainder of the game consisted of me flying the ships in ever decreasing circles, trying to get my guns to bear on the enemy while being shot.  The 2nd TIE fighter blazed away at the Falcon, reducing its shields to almost nil before also being destroyed.  Vader meanwhile repeatedly crashed into the Falcon while trying to manoeuvre, proving spectacularly that he must have been the worst pilot in the universe!  In X Wing this doesn't cause any damage but does mean that the crashing ship can't fire or take any actions... as Vader's chief ability is to have 2 actions versus everyone else's 1 this was a major blow.  Inevitably the game ended with the destruction of the remaining Imperial ship and a clean sweep for the rebels.

Crunch....There goes the no claims bonus!!!

Lessons to be learned from the game...

• Don't crash into asteroids
• Don't crash into other ships
• In general... don't crash!!

Although the points values were all balanced [69 points apiece since you ask!  No... I don't know why I couldn't make it a nice round number either], the game felt quite one sided.  The Falcon has 5 shield points and then 8 hull points to knock off before it's destroyed compared with no shields for the TIE fighters and a couple for Vader and only 3 hull boxes.  Makes sense as its a much larger ship but that combined with the all round fire ability proved very effective.  Perhaps if I'd managed to actually fire in more turns and been able to use the actions which were wasted for most of the game it might have made a difference... of course it could be that it was also down to Chris's tactics but I'd hate to admit that!!!

Woo hoo!!

5000 views as of today!  I know it's pretty minor compared with most blogs but given the blog  mainly just consists of my minor ramblings about toys and stuff, I'm pretty pleased.

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by.

Alastair

The Falcon has landed...

I've been eagerly waiting on the 2nd wave of releases for X Wing which have finally gone on sale in the last couple of weeks.

Wave 2 includes the Millennium Falcon, Slave 1, an A Wing fighter and a TIE interceptor.  To be honest the only one out of those that really appealed was the Falcon.  The fighters are fine and I guess will add to the range of options for the Empire or Rebels.  The other 2 are more interesting as they are much larger models and should give a very different scenario.

Slave 1 didn't really do it for me but the Falcon took me straight back to the 70s and my collection of action figures and ships [all of course completely lost and/or destroyed!].  I duly ordered the Millennium Falcon from Wayland Games and they had it dispatched as soon as the orders reached the UK.

The model itself is lovely... appropriately bigger than the fighters in the basic set and with a lot of detail on the ship itself. 

The set includes cards for Han Solo, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian and a generic smuggler, each with different skills.  There are some extra rules for larger ships and a new scenario to try out.  I've a game arranged in a couple of weeks to try it out so more info once we've played it out properly... in the meantime I'll content myself with flying it around the living room making spaceship noises, much to my son's embarrassment.

Forza Italia 2... biplane v biplane

Last week at Guildford we had the first 'official' game in a small Bag the Hun campaign that Keith and I have been playing.  There is a wider plan to have a Med based naval campaign so we wanted to see how the games worked when linked together.

For the first game my Italian's  led a flight of 4 Fiat CR42s and a couple of Stukas against a British convoy of barges, hoping to cause as much damage as possible before the inevitable British fighters turned up to spoil the fun.

The Stukas attack the barges, cunningly disguised as wooden bases

Initially all went well with the Stukas diving down on the barges, occasionally being driven off by anti-aircraft fire but not taking damage while a pair of CR42s strafed the barges at low level.  The 2nd pair of Fiats circled high above watching for the arrival of the Fleet Air Arm.

After 3 turns of merrily bombing and strafing a flight of 3 Gladiators  arrived and the CR42s peeled off to engage them, leaving the Stukas to continue the attack on the barges.  The 2nd group that been strafing took a very long time to climb to the correct altitude so it was left to group #1 to engage.

Some lucky firing from the Fiats shot up the lead Gladiator, damaging his controls and forcing him to turn tail and head off as he could no longer engage the enemy.  There then followed a couple of rounds of circling and twisting as both sides attempted to get onto each others tails, or even get anywhere near a decent enough position to get a shot off.

Finally the Fiats managed to get a burst of fire against the Gladiator flight leader and scored a critical hit!  Disappointingly all this did was cause the plane to swerve sideways.... but luckily this took it straight into the path of the remaining Gladiator, piloted by a very unlucky Rookie.  Again this wasn't disastrous as all Keith had to do to avoid the mid-air collision was not roll double 6.... and of course that's exactly what he did!  The Rookie was killed and the swerving Gladiator went into a spin, needing to test every turn to regain control and pull out of the dive.

The CR42's gunfire hits the Gladiator, forcing it into the path of it's colleague

Sportingly the Fiats followed him down, machine gunning the spinning biplane and causing major damage to his control which we decided would mean he couldn't regain control and plummeted to the ground.  As the bombers had now exhausted their supply of bombs, sinking 3 barges and damaging a 4th, we decided it was time to head for home just in case any more fighters appeared.

So a very successful first out for the Regia Aeronautica and a rather dismal start for the FAA but I'm sure there's plenty of time for them to even the score.

Cavalier 2013

Last Sunday was what usually marks the first signs of Spring in the show season [for me anyway] with Cavalier in Tonbridge, Kent.

I've always had a soft spot for this show... not too big but usually a decent spread of traders and games and a fairly good bring and buy.  It's also not too far away... only a short hop round the M25.

There's a fair amount of chatter on assorted blogs about the show [I think just about everyone that attended must have written a blog entry by now] with a lot focusing on the theft of stuff from the Bring and Buy but generally pretty much all positive about the show itself. 

I have to confess I came away feeling a bit disappointed with the show but I'm struggling to put my finger on why.  The show seemed quieter than usual... the TWWS website reports over 500 people attending but I'm not sure how that compares with previous years.  There certainly seemed to be fewer traders.  The Bring and Buy had little to tempt me and I guess this may be a sign of the ease of selling via Ebay etc.

I'd set off with a plan not to buy any more figures and managed to stick to this without any great difficulty.  I did pick up a copy of Warlord Games' Pike and Shotte rules and a few pieces of terrain from The Scene.  My son has been nagging me for ages to get some better hills so I purchased 3 of these and also got some of their 15mm skips...

... and shipping containers.


I want to build a more industrial setting for some of the Force on Force games we've played and these seemed to add to the general clutter.

Other than that I didn't find anything to tempt me... I spent some time looking at the Ironclads Miniatures VSF range and may well come back to these at some point as there were some very nice pieces, especially their steam tunnelling machine... I'm not sure what I'd do with it but I think I want one!

The games at the show were good but many seemed to suffer from one of 2 problems... either they were visually very impressive but were overloaded with vehicles, troops etc to the point where it became hard to see what was going on [some resembled a WW2 car park] and others were very much a club day out with the players having a nice game but not actually engaging with the public at all.  This is one of my real bugbears... if you're going to make the effort to put on a really good game, why not talk to people about it!

A couple of exceptions to this were the Staines Wargamers Pickett's Charge game where they seemed to be making a real effort to talk to people, and the West Kent Wargamers Medieval siege game.

Of course it could be that I was just in a bad mood!  Everyone else seems to be reporting a very positive day out and have been very complimentary about the show.

Bah!!!

Painters progress...

Well my resolution to try and actually paint something this year has got off to a reasonable start.

2 months into the year I've completed the batch of Gripping Beast Saxons that had lingered around since last year.  I've also now painted up some Peter Pig artillery to accompany my French troops in North America for Musket and Tomahawk.

I suspect that there are limited opportunities for a cannon to actually be effective in M&T and the crew are likely to be scalped before they can fire a round but I quite fancied the idea of having some.  I just need to engineer a scenario now where the brave French are defending a village which happens to be devoid of surrounding woodland and has clear lines of fire marked out!


I've also painted a unit of Russian Sailors from the excellent Copplestone Back of Beyond range.  I know they weren't on my schedule but I came across them in a box and decided they'd be fun to paint.  I haven't used my BoB figures for some time and quite fancy trying to resurrect them.

In the past I've used Chris Peers Contemptible Little Armies rules for this period and have a few other rules tucked away in the great rules box but I've heard very good things about the Triumph and Tragedy rules distributed by Empress Miniatures so will have to see about getting a set.

Cavalier is on at Tonbridge in Kent this Sunday and I should be going if all goes to plan [dependent on what time my son makes it back from Berlin on Saturday night...he has a considerably more exciting life than I do!!!].  It's a show I've always really enjoyed... not too big but usually a good spread of games and traders.  I'll update on the show next week.

An ECW Valentine

In the spirit of the Pike and Shotte game I played earlier this week here's a romantic message for all you god-fearing Puritans...